tragedies of heroism
by jaime-lannisters
Summary: the greatest of heroes always have the most tragic of endings / gideon and fabian lived, once. —prewett twins, for quidditch league fanfiction competition.


**written for**: quidditch league fanfiction tournament — round 11 / appleby arrows — chaser 3

**prompts**: Party; Trickery; "I thought about how there are two types of secrets: the kind you want to keep in, and the kind you don't dare to let out." ― Ally Carter

**warnings/notes**: swearing (towards the end), molly's younger than fabian/gideon (and also marlene and sirius etc whoops) because i wanted littlesis!molly and it was the easiest way to do it, also timeline of ages is really not followed here seeing as andromeda's a year older than sirius but w/e

* * *

**fabian prewett & gideon prewett**

_the greatest heroes always get the most tragic of endings. _

* * *

**zero.**

Fabian Prewett opens his eyes and the first thing he ever sees is his mirror image; later, he'll know him as Gideon, but for now, all he feels is wonder, delight and the sort of unconditional love that children are blessed with.

**one. **

His first proper word may be "Mum", but the first distinguishable sound Gideon ever makes is "Fabe". His mother coos over her little boy who loves his brother so much, and his father smiles at them and thinks about the happy endings they'll have, and prays they'll always be present in each other's. He knows too much about sibling abandonment to ever give up hope for his boys to always have each other's back.

**two. **

"Gid," Fabian says, screwing up his eyes at the pink bundle in his Grammy's arms. "What's it?"

Gideon squints his eyes as well, clearly puzzled. "Dunno," he proclaims with a shrug. He clambers over to his grandmother and peers at it doubtfully. "Ver' pink," he informs his brother.

"This is your sister, loves," Grammy tells them with a kind smile and a twinkle in her eye. "Her name's Molly."

Fabian and Gideon have never had a sister before, but she looks little and they decide without speaking that she's part of their wolf pack.

**three. **

"They're the horror of the store!" A man shouts angrily at his mother, and Gideon presses his hands over his ears in distress. He hates it when people are angry and sad and bad-loud and this man is not only angry, he's being bad-loud towards his mother, and Gideon is the epitome of unimpressed.

His mother is about to bark back when she notices Gideon's scrunched up expression, wobbling lip and tightly clamped ears. "Shh," she says soothingly, picking up her son and rocking him against her chest. "It's okay, Gideon, we're leaving now; we'll go find Daddy, Fabian and Molly, okay?"

With a dark glare at the man, she leaves the store, stroking her son's back as he hugs her neck tightly.

**four. **

Fabian runs through the house, yelling at the top of his lungs.

Gideon peers at him from his perch on the staircase. "Fabian," he says seriously. "Wha's goin' on?"

Fabian looks at his brother with excitement. "I'm being a dragon," he announces cheerfully.

Gideon regards him with confusion. "Don't dragons have wings?"

Fabian looks stumped for a second, then perks up. "You can be my wings!"

"Wha'bout fire?" Molly asks, waddling over to where the boys are talking.

Fabian considers this, then looks at Gideon with a beam. "You be the fire!" the boys chorus excitedly.

When their father comes to investigate the racket six minutes later, he finds Molly toddling around as fast as her little legs will take her, holding her hair as far as she can in front of her, followed by Fabian, shouting at the top of his lungs, and Gideon taking up the rear, flapping his arms around like nobody's business. It's such a good laugh that he takes a photo, chortling later to their mother when he shows her the image of the 'dragon' flying around the house.

**five. **

Gideon looks out the window and sighs. Fabian, sitting on his bed on his side of the room, notices and looks concerned. "What's wrong?"

Gideon looks wistful. "They're all going camping," he explains, pointing and their neighbours, the Prinkles and the Jamesons, who're loading a huge array of equipment into a large van.

Fabian looks stumped for a second. "Why don't we camp?"

"Where?" Gideon asks, not unreasonably.

Fabian surveys their room. "Here?"

He and Gideon study the area. Between their beds is about two metres of carpeted floor, and a metre from their beds' headboards is a large window that shows all the stars.

"We could build a tent over our beds?" Gideon suggests, and they set to work.

By nightfall, they've got a sheet canopy hitched from their beds, and when they lie on their backs, they can see right through the window and all the pretty stars.

Their parents are annoyed the next morning when they find them asleep in a bed of broken crackers which they'd smuggled out of the kitchen the night before, but are unsurprised when, on the following night, they come into check on their boys and find Fabian and Gideon sleeping under the 'tent', Molly nestled tightly between them.

**six.**

"Hiya, Marly," Fabian greets with a grin. The blonde little girl shoots him a mischievous grin.

"Hi Fabian," she says, pronouncing each syllable carefully. "Ca' you help me find Gideon? We're playing hide-and-seek 'cept I dunno my way 'round your house."

Fabian laughs, taking the four year old's hand. "Sure thing, Mars. Where'd you last see him?"

Marlene scrunches up her nose. "He and Lorraine talked about a special tree?" she ventures.

Fabian smirks. "_I_ know where he is," he informs her self-importantly, guiding her down to the willow beside the creek, where he suspects they'll find both of their absent siblings.

"Foun' you!" Marlene shrieks delightedly when she catches sight of Gideon, giggling uncontrollably by the time she and Fabian reach Gideon and Lorraine. "I foun' you," she states again, still giggling, but in a volume much closer to daily speech.

Gideon grins at her, and Lorraine smiles fondly. "Awh, man, guess I wasn't good enough at hiding, then," he plays along, pretending to look bashful. Fabian is always surprised at how mature Gideon is, though he doesn't know the word he's looking for is mature. He doesn't know many six year olds who'd act like they lost to appease an almost-five year old.

Marlene McKinnon's not just any four year old, though, and she shakes her head adamantly. "Fabian helped," she insists.

"I did," Fabian nods, with a modest grin, "but you did the actual finding! Anyway," he says with a smirk, "I got a new game. First up the tree wins!"

**seven. **

"Pink," Gideon says distastefully. "Mum, dogs aren't meant to be _pink_."

His mother looks very distressed. "Yes, thank you, Gideon, I realise that," she snaps, before wincing. "Sorry, just— go help your father, please."

Gideon trudges off to where his father and Fabian are making sandwiches for lunch and he sits down at the bench beside Molly. "Mummy turned Panda pink," he announces.

Fabian, Molly and his father turn to look at him, varying degrees of horror and amusement on their faces.

"She _what_?" Fabian and their dad ask in unison, though Fabian's tone is one of distress whereas his father sounds oddly amused.

"Turned Panda pink. It was an accident," he adds hastily, noting the look on his brother's face. "I think she's tryna fix it now."

"I think Panda'd be pretty pink," Molly puts in, only to be shot down by Fabian.

"You're only five, Molly, you don't understand," Fabian informs her, much to the chagrin of their mother, who walks in, and the amusement of their father.

Molly sticks her tongue out at Fabian, who folds his arms in satisfaction. "See? You're still a little kid."

Gideon's not entirely sure why his father bends over laughing, but the disgruntled looks on Molly's and Fabian's faces make him want to laugh too.

**eight. **

"Daddy," Fabian announces, "when I grow up, I'm going to be a horse."

While his father blinks and digests this, Gideon chimes in defiantly, "yeah? Well, I'm gonna be a cat whisperer!"

As his father's lip twitches as he struggles to process this until-now nonexistent vocation, Molly regards her brothers with incredulity.

"You're both nitwits," she tells them pompously. "I'm going to be the best thing."

"Oh yeah?" Fabian challenges.

"'Cos I don't see you promising to be a cat whisperer when you grow up!" Gideon adds. At Fabian's glare, Gideon reluctantly adds, "or a horse."

Molly tosses her hair over her shoulder with all the world-weariness of a particularly mature six year old. "I'm going to be a _helicopter_!"

This time, all three Prewett siblings glare at their father when he bursts out laughing.

**nine. **

"Mum, Molly's eaten my ice cream."

"Am not!"

"Are too!"

"Am not, _Fabian_ took it!"

"What? Why would I take it?"

"Because you're fat and greedy, like a hippo."

"... That was oddly specific, Molls."

"I'm not greedy!"

"And he's not _fat_— we're identical!"

"Mum, she's lying!"

"Mum, I swear I didn't take Gideon's ice cream!"

"Mum, someone took it!"

"..."

"Gideon, I think your father ate it. Go ask him for a few Galleons to buy another."

"It was Dad?!"

"Seriously? You're surprised by this? Molls, it's _Dad_."

**ten. **

Fabian collects the mail from the owl the day of the letters. "Gideon!" he hollers, running to the breakfast table, where his brother is seated. Instead of answering the questioning look directed at him, Fabian tosses Gideon his envelope and beams.

They look at each other, eyes wide, before sharing a silent countdown and ripping open their letters. Fabian's half terrified that one of their letters will be a rejection, despite them both having shown signs of magic, but from the growing grin on his twin's face, they're safe from that particular nightmare.

They look at each other again, and high five across the table. "Hogwarts!" they cheer.

**eleven. **

"Hey, I'm Benjy," a boy with light brown hair and an easy smile says.

Fabian flops down on his bed, in between Benjy and Gideon, and grins. "I'm Fabian," he greets.

"Gideon," his twin calls out by way of introduction from where he's splayed out on his own bed.

"Wicked," Benjy says. "Are you guys from a wizard family?" he asks, eying the Quidditch poster that Gideon's already put up by his bed.

"Yep, pureblood. You?" Fabian asks.

Benjy looks slightly bashful. "Muggleborn," he tells them. "I, uh, don't know a heck of a lot about this place."

"That's cool," Gideon reassures him. "We'll teach you all you need to know."

"And, hey," Frank, the boy sleeping on the other side of Gideon chimes in. "At least you can't get a Howler, right?"

**twelve. **

"What's up, buttercup?" Fabian asks Marlene in the Gryffindor common room. The blonde first year is staring daggers at Sirius Black, a mischievous boy with shaggy dark hair and the deepest eyes Fabian's ever seen.

"Black's an idiot," she grumbles.

"Awh," Gideon says, flopping down on the couch with Marlene, flinging his feet onto her lap. "Does little Mars bar have a crush?"

Marlene shoves his feet off in annoyance, shoots him an angry glare and opens her mouth, no doubt to berate him, but is interrupted by a smooth voice.

"Mars bar, huh?" says Sirius Black, grinning down at Marlene in a way meant to only infuriate.

After years of knowing Marlene, Gideon and Fabian know to duck when she's annoyed. Unfortunately for Sirius, either lack of knowledge or abundance of pride prevented him from doing so, and as such, he received a lamp to the head.

"That's our girl," Fabian says to Gideon proudly as McGonagall issues a detention to Marlene and accompanies Sirius to the Hospital Wing. Gideon mimes a tear of pride.

**thirteen. **

"Hi, Dorcas," Fabian greets, smiling kindly at the girl. His brother's showing her friend Mary about his Ancient Runes homework — "what trickery _is_ this?" he hears his brother exclaim over what he assumes is a particularly ridiculous question — and he figures he ought to try to talk to the girl, seeing as Mary and Gideon'll likely talk for aeons.

"Oh. Hello," she says, eyeing him carefully. Fabian gets the strange sense that she's measuring him up.

"What's up?" he asks.

"Not much. Just wondering how the hell _Zegers_ got beat out by Lukos—"

"—when Lukos is of a far inferior team, I know, right?" Fabian interrupts, his eyes alight at talk of Quidditch. He and Dorcas lose themselves into talk of Quidditch just as easily as Gideon and Mary lose themselves in their chatter.

**fourteen. **

Gideon's at a party and it's a really bad idea, but he stays anyway because he's worried about his friends.

It's bad enough that Fabian wants to come and drink himself into a happy stupor, but the fact that Marlene and Mary are here? Yeah, _not_ okay.

Gideon's searching for them, desperately hoping he won't run into his baby sister, when a slurring Fabian stumbles into him. Gideon catches him, and tries to help his brother regain his balance.

"Didja know Dorcas is here?" Fabian asks him, slurring slightly, though he doesn't sound particularly pleased. "She's with that twat Fenwick."

Gideon frowns. "Fabian, Benjy's one of your best mates," he reminds his brother. Clearly, his brother's a lot less charitable about his friends' statuses when he's drunk and they're in sight with a pretty girl.

"No, he sucks," Fabian says stubbornly.

Gideon sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. "You're drunk, and they're very good friends. He's been friends with Dorcas longer than you have," he reminds his brother. Judging by Fabian's scowl, this isn't welcome information.

He sighs, and grasps his brother by the arm. "C'mon, let's get you back to the dorm."

Despite Fabian's feeble protesting, Gideon strong arms him towards the door.

"Gideon?" a small voice says, and he looks down at little Mary MacDonald.

"Hey, Mary," he says with surprise. "Uh, didn't see you," and oh golly his heart's going a mile a minute, "how are you?"

She manages a tight smile. "Um, alone," she mumbles, and he frowns in concern.

"Look, I gotta take this idiot back to our dorm, but do you want to come with me? It's not the most thrilling, but—"

"I'd love to," she says quickly, smiling at him in relief. "Do you need help, or?"

Looking down at her tiny frame and his drunken mess of a twin, he smiles and shakes his head. "S'all good," he tells her.

"Hey, look," Fabian slurs. "It's Mary. Y'think she'll help me tell Dorcas that Fenwick's a—"

Gideon claps his hand over his brother's mouth. Mary shoots him a curious look. He grimaces. "Sorry," he apologises. "He doesn't mean it, honestly; he's just, ah, in a bad mood because of who Benjy was hanging out with tonight."

Mary's mouth makes a small 'o' of understanding, but she simply nods, smiles and doesn't press it; instead, she asks him about his holiday plans and Gideon thinks that this is a way better time than the party.

**fifteen.**

"Hey, Ted," Gideon greets the Head Boy as he walks Frank to his Prefects' Meeting.

"Wotcher, Gideon," Ted replies with a smile, and Gideon didn't realise Ted _actually knew his name_ so his answering grin is as startled as it is happy.

"How's Head Boy going?" Frank asks, and Ted smiles.

"It's sweet," he replies, looking up and smiling as the prefects stream in. Gideon raises an eyebrow at the slightly wistful look Ted sends in the direction of a Slytherin Sixth Year Prefect; sure, she's pretty, more like beautiful, in fact, but Andromeda Black isn't famous for being _nice_— the nicest Black sister, perhaps, but not nice like Ted. But who's Gideon to raise an eyebrow at the appreciation of a pretty girl?

"No-one," Fabian's voice whispers in his ear and Gideon turns around in shock.

"Did I say that aloud or are we telepathic now?" he demands, slightly amused.

"Neither," Fabian says with a smirk. "You're always full of rhetorical questions so I took a gamble that it'd make sense."

He looks so smug that Gideon just shoots him an unimpressed look and socks him in the arm, unable to hide his smirk at Fabian's yelp.

**sixteen. **

Fabian's lying on a couch in the common room, stroking Dorcas' hair as they — and the rest of Gryffindor — observe an argument between Sirius and Marlene.

Well, Mary and Gideon are conspicuously absent, but Fabian reckons his brother deserves a few minutes of peace with the girl.

"You're such a fucking git sometimes, Black!"

"I was just looking out for you!"

"Looking out for me? _Looking out for me_? You had _no right_ and you know it—"

"He was a creep!"

"So let _me_ punch him! I'm not some damsel in distress, Black!"

"Mars is way scarier than you, Sirius," James Potter interjects, much to the amusement and agreement of all.

"Shut it, Prongs," Sirius warns as Marlene takes a step closer.

"You just can't leave off, can you? Just when I think you're capable of not being a total prick—"

"I thought you decided I was definitely one when we were twelve, McKinnon?"

"Yeah, well, I was willing to admit I'd made a mistake in that judgement but—"

Fabian isn't sure if he should gasp or clap, so he settles for laughing, clapping and gasping at the sight of Sirius Black kissing Marlene McKinnon. All around the common room, money's exchanging hands, though of course Marlene can't leave it at that.

"You're still a prick. And I'm still annoyed at you."

"Feel like yelling at me about it next Saturday at The Three Broomsticks?"

"..."

"..."

"It's a date."

"Um," Remus says, "guys, that's not actually a Hogsmeade weekend."

"Eh," Marlene as Sirius say together, their attitude to the rules being one and the same.

Fabian catches Gideon's eye as he and Mary sneak in, beaming delightedly, and he assumes that Marlene and Sirius aren't the only two who've decided to give things a go tonight.

**seventeen. **

"I can't believe we actually graduated," Benjy mutters, and Frank raises an eyebrow.

"Did you doubt us?" he asks.

"Yeah," Benjy answers so honestly that everyone chuckles.

"The real test is if we can graduate," Marlene puts in, much to the agreement of everybody.

Lily looks offended. "Okay, not you, Lil. You, Mary and Remus'll graduate, no problem," Marlene appeases, catching sight of her pretty friend's expression.

Mary kisses Gideon softly and Fabian waltzes with Dorcas around the common room one last time as Frank pecks Alice on the forehead and Benjy, Marlene, Sirius and James open up the alcohol.

It's not perfect, but it's the perfect ending to this chapter in their story because it represents everything about them and their friends beautifully, so they love it and cherish it anyway.

**eighteen. **

"The Order of the Phoenix is..." and Fabian knows Dumbledore's talking but he looks at his brother, who's actually listening, and he thinks of how much he loves him, and all their good times, and how much he loves Dorcas and Molly and his parents and Benjy and Marlene and Mary and Frank and Alice and Lorraine and Sirius and James and Remus and Peter and Lily all of his friends.

"Yes," he says, despite not hearing a thing Dumbledore said. "I'm in."

"Me too," Gideon says.

And just like that, they sign their lives away.

**nineteen. **

Gideon tells Mary he loves her, and she cries, before hugging him close and telling him she loves him too, more than anything else, and that's why she's so terrified.

**twenty. **

"If it ever comes down to it," Gideon tells Fabian, "I want to have your back."

It's the first time they've really considered dying — or at least, verbally — and Fabian's fucking terrified but he's also desperate to tell Gideon the same thing.

"You too," he says. "I've got your back, Gideon. Always."

**twenty-one. **

"Where's Dorcas Meadowes?" Avery asks menacingly, and Gideon swallows. There are secrets one keeps because one wants to, like Benjy's new romance with Lorraine McKinnon and every little thing he's whispered in Mary's ear, and there are secrets one keeps because to let it out is an irreversible thing, such as the location of the girl his brother loves most in the world.

"Never," Gideon bites out, and Avery lifts his wand. Gideon stares defiantly, but Fabian's suddenly there and Avery's on the floor and Mulciber's pointing his wand at Fabian and everything in Gideon screams at him to move.

And so the duel begins, fighting not for their own lives, but for the hope of the other's, and the desire to be together if they must fall.

"Hey, Fabian?" Gideon grunts as he dodges a curse from Macnair.

"Yeah, Gid?" Fabian responds, cursing Rookwood as he does so.

"I have—" roll, hex, "—a feeling that we're not getting out of here."

Fabian's so quiet that Gideon doesn't think he's heard him, until— "in that case, I'm sorry you're going to die, but I'm glad that you're with me."

Gideon smiles. "Hey," he says," always got your b—"

The killing curse interrupts him mid-sentence.

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**note from the author:** i hope you enjoyed that! please leave a review, and i'd love it if you made sure that if you favourite, you also review! xx


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